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When it comes to career development, supply chain managers have to execute a bit of jiu jitsu. They’re charged with nding and developing the next generation of talent while simultaneously advancing their own careers in a eld that is often overlooked by senior management. The biggest challenge of all is getting their agenda in front of the Board at a time when supply chain operations are more critical than ever to an organization’s success, but still largely invisible compared to sales, marketing, and product development. Remember: It’s your career—and your supply chain. We hope this month’s issue will help you make the most of both.

No one has to tell you about the market forces weighing on distributors: from high expectations of the purchase experience to direct-from-manufacturer purchasing to rapidly changing demographics.
Read this whitepaper to uncover the perceptions and behaviors driving the changes, and gain insight into how you can leverage them into greater differentiation and growth.

Collaboration isn't a new concept. What is new is how we collaborate. Innovative technologies such as social collaboration platforms, mobility applications and intelligent analytics and dashboards have become much more prominent within the supply chain. During this webcast we'll explore how combining these innovations with end-to-end supply chain visibility creates a prime opportunity to maximize your manufacturing Supply Chain IQ, enabling you to make better decisions and execute those decisions more quickly and profitably.

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part article written by Maha Muzumdar, vice president of supply chain marketing, Oracle & Kerrie Foy, PLM/PIM applications product marketing, Oracle

As noted in our first installment, siloed processes with stand-alone technology and minimal interaction can severely limit performance.

On the other hand, a comprehensive, integrated approach that leverages both product lifecycle management (PLM) and supply chain management (SCM) processes and solutions can yield exponential value – better time to market, right products to the right customers, better quality and improved order fill rates. Let’s take a look:

Innovation: According to a 2010 survey by Ernst & Young entitled “Competing for Growth,” 71 percent of respondents cited product and service innovation as being most important to gaining a competitive edge. Glance at annual reports of top companies in most industries and you’ll find innovation-fueled corporate strategies weaved throughout. As innovation increases and product lifecycles shorten, markets become more volatile and place increased pressure on the supply chain to adapt accordingly. PLM offers a vital product record to readily tap for rapid design/part reuse, ideation management, stakeholder collaboration, organizational knowledge, and analytic capabilities to empower decision makers at all levels of the business to act and plan quickly. By incorporating real-time product data from a reliable enterprise PLM system with best-in-class SCM solutions, companies can dramatically improve their organizational ability to execute “what if” scenarios, breach new markets, and transform internally focused cost-centric supply chains into “outside-in” or externally-focused extended value chains.

Customization: Ernst & Young also found in its survey that 87 percent of all respondents grew their portfolio of products over the past three years to maximize their market potential. A global proliferation of new products brings all sorts of corresponding product and labeling requirements that each have a range of safety and environmental regulations, which may widely differ from one market to the next. A compliance lag in the product development process could wreck havoc on the supply chain and business reputation as a whole.

For example, a leading provider of construction materials for residential and commercial properties recently integrated its PLM processes with SCM software to automate and optimize the flow of capturing customer needs, convert those needs to product requirements, feed them to the bill of material (BOM), and release to manufacturing, while noting the final delivery location to ensure compliance with local regulations. Prior to integrating product development process with its configure-to-order model process, it took several months to manually gather, enter and send product requirements to manufacturing. With the combined and tightly integrated PLM and SCM processes, the required time lag was whittled down to days and weeks, and greatly reduced the chance of errors.

Recent Entries

While many industry analysts contend that distribution centers near U.S. East Coast ports will see a surge of new business after the Panama Canal expansion, real estate experts say this phenomena is already underway.

Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers, based in Portland, Oregon, is an importer of high quality specialty-grade coffees from over 15 countries around the world. As pioneer of the “Relationship Coffee Model,” it has championed the direct trade model and the creation of closer connections between farmers and consumers.

The Hackett Group’s World-Class Procurement Performance Advantage Research is based on an analysis of results from recent benchmarks, performance studies, and advisory and transformation engagements at hundreds of large global companies.